World War II Database

Full Title: Fearsome Battle: With the Canadian Army in World War II Europe

"Something about war fascinates young men, though nothing quite prepares them for its reality", warned author Robert Rogge in the very first sentence of his book. But I did not get the hint. Actually, there was a warning right on the cover of the book; "Fearsome", he said. I missed that, too.

Sometimes when we study war, we choose to see only the glory of it. The thrill of victory, the honor of fighting on the side of "right", and the awe-inspiring technology. I admit that I make that mistake sometimes, too; after all, people tend to only see things they want to see in order to enjoy something to the fullest. Rogge did not let me have any of that, though. He made sure that his memoir Fearsome Battle, told through his alter ego by the name of Ian, leaves no doubt war can only be associated with horror, not glory.

In the summer of 1941, the young American Ian thought he was going to miss the war so he crossed the border into Canada to enlist. Fearsome Battle chronicles his experiences from the day he enlisted to the day he returned to Canada. Through a series of essays and short stories, some as short as a single page, Rogge succeeds in telling his WW2 story on a personal level through Ian. As I read about his opinions on the generals' war by attrition, or in his words "bloody murder", I felt angry with him. As he sat down on the side of his slit trench to eat a simple meal of stew, bread, and tea during a rare lull of battle, I let out a sigh of relief as if it was me who got to relax after intense fighting. When he spoke of the unnamed Canadian soldier who stabbed and killed a captured SS officer with a dagger, I gasped in disbelief at the cruelty but somehow was able to understand the pent up anger of the Canadian soldier who had lost his buddy to illegal execution of prisoners by other SS men. When an artillery barrage came down and there was nothing for an infantry man to do except to duck in a slit trench and hope no shells land nearby, I shook in fear with him. It is through these intimately written stories that I was able to understand how Rogge progressed from an idealistic young man to a cynic who just wanted to get the job done and go home. It did not take him long to become appalled by the deaths all around him; "[t]his was killing just for the sake of killing. What a travesty of God's word", he wrote, and I understood him.

All the while, Rogge told his story with beautiful language. Not too fancy but yet not overly plain, his choice of words is one of the things I enjoyed the most in this book. Below is a sample passage from the book, noting the incident when he shot and killed a teenage Volksturm soldier he came across.

Rogge successfully portrayed the horror of combat with Fearsome Battle, making this one of the greatest memoirs of ground combat that I have yet come across.